End note
It’s our 4th and final week here and it’s time to sum up the trip while on the road to the airport. It’s surreal to think of heading home to a country that has been caught up in its own hurricane catastrophe now going for several weeks. Personally, both Sadna and I have taken much real world experience from this trip and left behind a bit of naive theory on how successful relief work is done on the ground. Each type of contribution has it’s place depending on what stage a crisis is in. For example, donating money directly is helpful during a certain period, but if done wrong it can quickly create dependency on outside money, and people will eventually lose interest in pursuing work. Organizations that help get people back to work or look for buy-in from a town before going forward with a large community project sound like common sense, but it’s surprising how many outside groups still look to impose their own belief systems and solutions without doing homework on cultural differences and local politics.
On the other side, the media mantra earlier this year headlined how more lives would be lost to disease and starvation than to the tsunami itself. Fortunately, this never came to pass because individuals and organizations who cared quickly stepped in and helped out.
A sincere thank you to friends, family, clients and students who have been so generous in donating to this cause…it was well worth it!
As for traveling to this unique and beautiful country, you should find Sri Lanka’s people as friendly as they are resilient. Sri Lanka has many names: Serendib, Ceylon, Teardrop of India, Resplendent Isle, Island of Dharma, Pearl of the Orient - all telling of a place worth seeing for yourself.
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